El error humano y la gestión de seguridad: la perspectiva sistémica en las obras de James Reason

Abstract

This paper briefly revises three books written by James Reason (namely «Human Error», «Managing the risks of organizational accidents», and «The human contribution»), a worldwide eminent expert of human error and organizational ergonomics. Through these books it is possible to understand how safety management in high risk socio-technical systems required a perspective shift in the last decades, concerning both safety culture and safety management practices, especially after enormous, tragic catastrophes. This fundamental change can be comprehended thanks to several important aspects: among them, the spreading of «organizational» models of accidents (which try to explain errors by focusing not only on first line operators), the adoption of a systemic perspective also in relation to preventive measures of safety management, and the consideration of latent conditions able to promote the inevitable active errors in operational contexts. All these aspects are discussed here, inviting the reader to the integral reading of the books reviewed, now translated to Spanish and published by Modus Laborandi, Madrid.

Keywords

• Human error
• latent condition
• violations
• safety management
• systemic approach